It’s been good to visit some local sites over the last few days and check up on how spring is progressing.
- At the airfield on the Beds/Northants border it felt more like winter than spring. But I heard and saw my first UK Whitethroat of 2016 and there were two migrant Wheatears too, so it must be spring.
- In the back garden it felt more like winter than spring. But the grass needed cutting and Blackbirds and Robins were gathering food to take back to their nests (and both appreciated the cut grass) and so it must be spring.
- As I got in the car I needed to scrape ice/hail off the windscreen it felt more like winter than spring. But 40 minutes later at Stanwick Lakes it was sunny and warm and I heard my first Nightingale for my local patch since 2007. I also heard my first Garden Warbler of 2016 – a fairly average first date for me for this site. So it must be spring!
- Yesterday morning at Stanwick Lakes, the woman I passed correctly said ‘It’s still icy!’ so it felt more like winter than spring. But as we passed each other there were Reed Warblers and Sedge Warblers singing on one side of the path, and a Willow Warbler, a Blackcap and my first singing Lesser Whitethroat of 2016 on the other side; so it must be spring
Nightingales and Lesser Whitethroats are long gone from here. It’s the same sad story most places. At least phenologists, anoraks and train spotters are still at large. It must be spring when they start to accelerate through their note books. Britain, the land of stubby pencil merchants, activists and amateurs.
But that choral spring moment is over for Nuthatches; they have just passed their very sharp and precise song spike — week 16 (18th April center). Does that date apply to other regions?
Bullfinches seem to have abandoned their song and yet, judging by sightings and the very occasional call, their numbers are about the same. Stock Doves and Tree-creepers are very quiet too. (They were last year as well.) The lack of kinglet song, especially Firecrest, is also odd.
It’s the cold north winds. Maybe, and yet the song of the diminutive Wren fills the silence of the woods with its exuberance, loudness and quantity.
Cuckoo, blackcap, willow warbler and all the usual suspects in north end of Wakerley Wood this morning. Long tail tits with bent tail ends on the feeder so assuming they’re nesting in the garden somewhere along with the blackbirds, song thrushes, robins, sparrows and wrens. Love this time of year.